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Performing brings woman to a prouder stage

Dawn D'Cruz became more comfortable with her diagnosis of mental illness after acting in plays during Mad Pride week, whose culture night involves two plays on Friday.

Dawn D'Cruz stopped being ashamed that she is schizophrenic after stepping on stage at Mad Pride. (Aaron Harris / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Geoffrey VendevilleStaff Reporter

Fri., July 10, 2015

Dawn D’Cruz was ashamed of being labelled mentally ill, but the theatre helped change that.

She took the stage for the first time with the Friendly Spike Theatre Band, an amateur Parkdale troupe, in a Mad Pride production 16 years ago.

Founded in 1993 as “Psychiatric Survivor Day,” Mad Pride has become a weeklong series of events meant to celebrate the contributions of people labelled mentally ill.

D’Cruz thought she’d be a natural actor. But on the night of her debut in Angels of 999 Queen Street West — a play about the inmates of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, where the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is now — she was petrified. “I was so nervous I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t do anything,” she said.

Her director, Ruth Ruth Stackhouse, urged her to use that nervous energy, saying: “Project yourself, go over the top!”

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Onstage, “I found an outlet for my stressors,” D’Cruz said. “I felt I could give myself — my real self — to the public. And I wouldn’t be hiding.

“I’d also be helping people who were silent. Maybe their voices could be heard through our plays.”

She has now been in several Friendly Spike productions since and doesn’t get stage fright anymore. Lucky for her, because on Friday July 10 she is playing a supporting role in What’s Next? . . .The Big C. Set in a psych ward, it’s about one schizophrenic patient’s fears of having cancer. D’Cruz portrays a Ryerson student with bipolar and histrionic personality disorders who is waiting for a psychological assessment.

The playwright, Henrik Kartna, stars as a schizophrenic like himself who is afraid he may have cancer.

He wrote the play after talking with his doctor about the high smoking rate among mentally ill people; they’re two to four times as likely to partake in the habit, according to a CAMH fact sheet.

D’Cruz hasn’t smoked since she was teenager, but she knows what it’s like to struggle with mental illness. She had her first breakdown when she was 18 at a high school dance in Brampton.

She spent the next two months recovering at home and another at Peel Memorial Hospital, where a doctor diagnosed her with a “false fear of things” and put her on meds.

Over the years, doctors have changed her diagnosis. Her latest says has “chronic schizophrenia.”

But she doesn’t put much stock in labels. “They’re for jam jars and ketchup bottles — not people,” she said.

That’s part of the philosophy behind events like Mad Pride, according to Terry Krupa, a professor in the Queen’s University School of Rehabilitation Therapy.

A lot of work is done to fight stigma and to make sure those who struggle with mental illness have equal opportunities, she said. “But pride is something different. This isn’t just about me getting the same as you. It’s about me not being ashamed, being open and celebrating it.”

D’Cruz, 56, now wears many hats. She supervises cooks in a community kitchen, does landscaping and works as a peer advocate for the Dream Team, a group that pushes for supportive housing and tries to break the stigma associated with mental illness and poverty.

Her daughter Mary graduated from Concordia University in Montreal last May, in art history and studio art.

D’Cruz said she isn’t embarrassed about her illness anymore.

“Every time you tell your story, you’re empowered. Every time.”

Mad Pride Culture Night kicks off at the May Robinson Building, 20 West Lodge, with a meet and greet at 5 p.m. There is a book launch at 6 p.m. for a 70-page reader that reviews the Friendly Spike Theatre Band’s 16-year history through the eyes of the actors. It is to be followed by two plays: The Closet Pub and What’s Next? . . .the Big C.

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